In Morocco eBook

[Footnote A: The “deacon” or elder
of the Moslem religion, which has no order of priests.]

[Illustration: From a photograph from the
Service des Beaux-Arts au Maroc

Fez—­the praying-chapel in the Medersa el
Attarine]

The interior construction of the mosque was no doubt
usually affected by the nearness of Roman or Byzantine
ruins. M. Saladin points out that there seem
to be few instances of the use of columns made by native
builders; but it does not therefore follow that all
the columns used in the early mosques were taken from
Roman temples or Christian basilicas. The Arab
invaders brought their architects and engineers with
them; and it is very possible that some of the earlier
mosques were built by prisoners or fortune-hunters
from Greece or Italy or Spain.

At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the
vaulting rests in the earlier mosques, as at Tunis
and Kairouan, and the mosque El Kairouiyin at Fez,
gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or
with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen.
The exterior of the mosques, as a rule, is almost
entirely hidden by a mushroom growth of buildings,
lanes and covered bazaars, but where the outer walls
have remained disengaged they show, as at Kairouan
and Cordova, great masses of windowless masonry pierced
at intervals with majestic gateways.

Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide
doors of beaten bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies
the Court of the Ablutions. The openings in the
facade were multiplied in order that, on great days,
the faithful who were not able to enter the mosque
might hear the prayers and catch a glimpse of the
mihrab.

In a corner of the courts stands the minaret.
It is the structure on which Moslem art has played
the greatest number of variations, cutting off its
angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan,
and endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives
by which the ground-plan of one story passes into
that of the next. These problems of transition,
always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions
and ways of treatment, but in Morocco the minaret,
till modern times, remained steadfastly square, and
proved that no other plan is so beautiful as this
simplest one of all.

Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms,
libraries and other dependencies, which grew as the
Mahometan religion prospered and Arab culture developed.

The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque:
it was the academy where the Moslem schoolman prepared
his theology and the other branches of strange learning
which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation
of the private house to religious and educational
ends; or, if one prefers another analogy, it is a
fondak built above a miniature mosque.
The ground-plan is always the same: in the centre